Free and Open Source Software

There's a popular-ish open source game I remember playing a few years ago, Warsow, and when I checked on it now, it's been forked and while the fork is genuinely better and funner to play in so many ways, it expects to be launched through Steam. I wanted to tinker with maps and stuff and started researching, and while I did find what I was looking for somewhat in older Warsow-related threads, when I went to the official warfork-qfusion github repo looking for specific documentation for the new fork, I was greeted with a link to their Discord "if you have any questions".

Yet this game brands itself FOSS, and it is technically released under a FOSS license and their github shows that they are actively developing it in cooperation with a community - just not a community you can be in without accepting certain walled gardens. It honestly sucks to see. I wanna access threads discussing this software, but I won't be able to unless I go through an ID verification process and trust a silicon valley company to both secure my data and not use it in some nefarious way. And to even run the game, I had to accept Steam, which I honestly didn't have to do in order to run Warsow back in the day, and I enjoyed that - what was wrong with just shipping a binary and letting people launch it how they like, with optional integrations? What's wrong with having an open forum for tech questions? Why wall the garden that you're making supposedly open products in?

In short, what do you call projects like this - the increasingly common projects that, while technically FOSS, put all their documentation and discussion on discord, and seem to expect their users to swallow unsavory default options or even use proprietary middle-ware or launchers? Proprietary FOSS?

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46445602

Is this still going to happen? What can we do?

I want to learn about Open Source Hardware and Robotics for science laboratories by which I mean not only hardware with open source software for operating it but hardware that has well documented parts for repair -- open operating software and open blueprints, I guess.

I work in academic science, and I'd really like to automate my lab someday, but it seems most equipment gets dropped by the companies that make it after some time or the company goes out of business. While there are a few companies that have started making accessible APIs, most try to suck you into their ecosystem. Oh, and don't get me started on the absolutely insane service contracts -- 50k/yr for an evenings work and some parts. Maybe companies can pay for all that and an upgrade every five-to-ten years, but it's not sustainable for academic labs. My boss repairs his own aktas, but I want to automate way more.

Ideally, I was hoping there might be some other scientists out there who can point me to things that might already have been done. I'd rather not re-invent the wheel unless I absolutely have to.

Alternatively, any advice on where to start learning this? It seems like many universities have "maker spaces" to work on proto-typing, and I think MIT's "how to make almost anything" is on their open course catalog. Is there anything more lab focused?

Not the dev. I just wanted to share an app I like. I use it to quickly clean tracking and referral junk from links before sharing, but the app can be set as your default browser if you want to sanitize links before you open them.

Hello my name is Daniel Hanrahan and I am proud to announce that all my FOSS video games can now run on any hardware with a monitor, although some assembly (not the language) is required to get it running on some hardware. Examples of some hardware in this situation is the pdp-1, SNES, microcontrollers, you name it. To be clear the compatibility versions of my games unless the game has no compatibility version, then main version would be compatibility version and does not use raylib 6 and text based, is the best versions of the games to run on that hardware because it uses raylib 6 and to get it running, you will most likely need to make changes the renderer to get it running on that hardware. Text based games should be able to run on that hardware with only control changes if necessary. Link to site: https://daniel-hanrahan-tools-and-games.github.io/

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to find some software for team collaboration on a private internal network. Think instant messenger but with file transfers, groups chats, and other team-based features. It would also be useful if all users could access the logs from the host.

Does anyone know of any reputable FOSS software that does this?

Thanks, Hirundinidae

EDIT: Lots of great responses thanks everyone!

Im looking for a simple foss mood tracker app for android. I looked around but non of the once I found on f-droid or otherwise, had one feature that I would really like.

I would like to be asked 3 times a day (morning, noon, evening) for my mood with push reminders and answer on a simple scale. Maybe 1-5 or 3 arrows (up, middle, down).

Does any one have a suggestion?

https://flareapp.moe/

https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.dimension.flare

Is it legit? Does it work? How does it compare to other clients?

Malus, which is a piece of "satire" but also fully functional, performs a "clean room" clone of open source software, meaning users could then sell, redistribute, etc. the software without crediting the original developers. But I have a hard time with the "clean room" argument since the LLM doing the behind-the-scenes work has already ingested the entire corpus of open source software -- and somehow the output of the LLMs isn't considered a derivative work.

We have launched our wiki and forum that is built around collaboration on Libre projects. The aim is to create a community built around genuine and lasting connections, where people can work together on various projects across various disciplines - from artists to software developers...we hope to create a hub for skill-sharing and project creation.

In an age of instant connection, we are still remarkably lonely in our creative work. You can have a niche interest and instantly find someone across the globe who shares it — but sharing isn't the same as collaborating. At some point in your creative journey, you may lack a specific skill or just need fresh ideas to move forward.

UnfinishedProjects is an attempt to connect you with other creative individuals and serve as a hub for open-licensed work. Our goal is to enable small, meaningful contributions across multiple projects, allowing us to move them forward together. It is an experiment in breaking isolation . . . an attempt to bring stalled ideas, or those simply too complex to finish alone, back to life through the power of collective contributions.

We aren't just another place to talk about what we like. We don't want to be yet another modern social media platform. We have faith in selfless connections and aim to build a place for meaningful and thoughtful discussions. We want to promote collaboration over self-promotion — a space where "incomplete" is not a shame or failure, but an opportunity to exchange with others, to build together, and eventually . . . to share the feeling of pride in what you've achieved.

We hope some of you will check out our platform as we try to establish our community.
Feel free to stop by our forum and introduce yourself at https://forum.unfinishedprojects.net/ - or read more about or community vision on our wiki at https://unfinishedprojects.net/wiki/About/Vision

In an age with modern social media and internet, it can sometimes be hard to sit down and dedicate time to build lasting relationships and communities, but we hope that our forum is taking a step in the right direction, and that you will help us build it into a community that brings back some purpose into our digital lives.

Back in 2005, a bug report was filed by Kjetil Kjernsmo, then running KDE 3.3.2 on Debian Stable. He wanted the ability to have each connected screen show a different virtual desktop independently, rather than having all displays switch as one unit.

Over the years, over 15 duplicate reports piled onto the original as more people ran into the same wall. And that's not a surprise, because multi-monitor setups have become increasingly common.

The technical reason why this issue stayed open this long comes down to X11. Implementing it there would have required violating the EWMH specification, which has no concept of multiple virtual desktops being active at the same time.

The KWin maintainer Martin Flöser had said as much in 2013, effectively ruling it out for the entire KDE 4.x series. The only realistic path was through Wayland, and that path needed someone willing to actually walk it.

Someone finally did. The feature has now landed in KWin's master branch and is set for a Plasma 6.7 introduction.

I am proud to announce that my open source software including games now has a license grant to use the polyform noncommercial license or polyform strict license instead of GNU GPL v3.0 in specific cases. Why did i do this you may ask, well there maybe times when developers have to use proprietary tools or programming languages and there maybe a TOS or EULA with either of those things that says you cannot release software commercially made with these tools unless specific requirements are done or only specific people can work on your software that uses these tools and thats what the license grant solves. To find out more go to the link to the site and the links to repos are in this link: https://daniel-hanrahan-tools-and-games.github.io/

Documentation: https://docs.searxng.org/index.html

I finally self host my own private instance of the meta search engine SearXNG. I did not install it manually, so there is not this deep understanding how it works or anything like that. But at least its compiled from source and runs on my local machine.

Thanks to the AUR script: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/searxng-git (View PKGBUILD install script) Now I can use the search engine in my web browser at the configured address. It was surprising easy and quick process (thanks to this script). There are other methods of installing too, official: https://docs.searxng.org/admin/installation.html

# Archlinux, AUR

# Build and install from source:
yay searxng-git

# Configure the search engine (shouldn't need to):
sudoedit /etc/searxng/settings.yml

# Start server when needed:
systemctl start searxng.service

# Or automatically start the server whenever you login:
systemctl enable searxng.service

This feels so good and liberating. Before that I was using DuckDuckGo, then tried Startpage and then used public instances of SearXNG. So I still had to trust them. The only downside is, that my IP is still known to any search engine I have enabled in SearXNG. I could enable Proton VPN for that, but I'm not enabling and disabling VPN each time I want to do a websearch.

The next logical step would be to have a dedicated server machine to run this (and possibly other servers) and access it from the web on any other computer I want to. But that is something I'm not getting into right now.

"A huge thank you to the Sovereign Tech Agency for their support of open source and the Fediverse!

We are grateful for this funding, but this is not all that we need! We have even more plans and ideas to tackle the complex challenges that we need to address for everyone. We really appreciate all the donations from the people who use Mastodon every day, so please continue to donate when you can, to help us to build a sustainable open social web for everyone."

I used to adore the Feedbro extension for Firefox - until I learned that browser extensions are a privacy concern and stopped using them. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find anything similar for the Linux desktop. I just can't seem to find the 'sweet spot' with all the readers I've tried. Some are bloated with features and complicated configurations that I will never use. Others are too simplistic. Still others haven't seen an update in years. I feel like this is an impossible quest.

The readers I have tried (and discarded):

• Liferea
• RSS Guard
• News Flash
• Feeds
• Feed Deck
• Feed Flow
• Akregator
• Thunderbird
• Raven Reader

Here are the features I need:

• FOSS (obviously)
• Import/export OPML
• Scale the size of the UI and all text elements
• RSS feed discovery
• Fetch full articles
• Configure update interval
• Privacy-conscious
• Desktop only (I am currently unable to self-host)

Things that would be nice, but I can live without if I have to:

• Dark mode
• An uncluttered, two-column display

That's about it. Now tell me that I am asking too much and there's no hope for me. :D

• CorridorKey-Engine on GitHub
• EZ-CorridorKey on GitHub
• CorridorKey-Runtime on GitHub, DaVinci Resolve plugin

Corridor Digital released an open-source greenscreen keyer/extractor, powered by AI, usable on consumer GPUs.

The video covers what happened after their initial release, community and professional responses, interviews with professionals about what can be improved, and finally a practical test/example in Davinci (Video Editor).

Hi all! I'd like to request suggestions for a secure messaging app, ideally that doesn't require mobile phone for registration, to stay connected to my family In Russia.

The country wages war on the Internet, messengers and VPNs. Options are blocked one by one, and one can't register in Signal because numbers that send registration confirmation from Signal are blocked...

I'd need an app that allows group chats, calls, media attachments and audio messages, easy enough for older people would be able to install. Ideally, something niche enough it won't be blocked right away...

It's a lot of requirements, but I hope something like this exists and would be very grateful for any recommendations.

Android / iPhone / desktop.

TL;DR: The advent of AI based, LLM coding applications like Anthropic’s Claude and ChatGPT have prompted maintainers to experiment with integrating LLM contributions into open source codebases.

This is a fast path to open source irrelevancy, since the US copyright office has deemed LLM outputs to be uncopyrightable. This means that as more uncopyrightable LLM outputs are integrated into nominally open source codebases, value leaks out of the project, since the open source licences are not operative on public domain code.

That means that the public domain, AI generated code can be reused without attribution, and in the case of copyleft licences - can even be used in closed source projects.

geteilt von: https://piefed.social/post/1174746

What I gathered is that they were probably going to open-source it when it's finished but accidentally made it public now.

Germans, find out all the people behind this company. Owners, workers, lawyers. They hate you. Give them a hearty welcome back.